explore | Grilled Cheese

@asls.org.uk Oct 15, 2026, 12:34 PM

“Allan Ramsay: Writing the Scots Enlightenment” went on display in the @natlibscot.bsky.social in Feb 2020. The exhibition illustrated Ramsay’s talent for verse & drama, & his influence in reviving the Scots language: this video shows some key highlights
#C18
www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hz1...

@asls.org.uk Oct 15, 2026, 12:34 PM

“Ramsay ‘transformed the genre of the pastoral drama by bending it in a more “realistic” direction’. This is where Ramsay enters a rather heated and complicated British context.”

—Craig Lamont unpacks Allan Ramsay’s THE GENTLE SHEPHERD
#C18 #drama #theatre
www.thebottleimp.org.uk/2023/11/clas...

@asls.org.uk Oct 15, 2026, 12:34 PM

What 1725 Scottish play was called ‘the noblest pastoral’ by Robert Burns, inspired more than 40 paintings, & was performed throughout Scotland as late as the end of the 19th century? Steven Newman considers Allan Ramsay’s most famous work
#C18 #C19 #drama
euppublishingblog.com/2022/07/01/w...

@asls.org.uk Oct 15, 2026, 12:34 PM

“Few figures of the Scottish Enlightenment tick as many boxes as Ramsay in the check-list of ‘enlightened’ activity”

Why is he not better known? Read Craig Lamont’s “Allan Ramsay & Edinburgh: Commemoration in the City of Forgetting” on @projectmuse.bsky.social (OA)
#C18
muse.jhu.edu/article/696246

Abstract
This article is a study of the memorials concerning the poet Allan Ramsay in Edinburgh. Ramsay, best known for his pastoral drama The Gentle Shepherd, has been largely neglected, or 'forgotten', in Edinburgh's 19th-century project of memorialisation. The Ramsay Monument in West Princes Street Gardens by John Steell is the rare exception. In order to understand the effect of this and other memorials I have examined bibliographical and periodical sources and set these against the longer tradition of commemorating Ramsay in the Pentlands area which we might call 'Gentle Shepherd Country'. I have also incorporated theories from memory studies, especially those particular to the study of memorials and 'cultural memory'. Finally, it will be shown that the late 19th-century fashion for medieval nostalgia and the very recent turn towards celebrating Robert Louis Stevenson during large scale UNESCO events have superseded the age of the Scottish Enlightenment with new 'images' of Edinburgh.

@asls.org.uk Oct 15, 2026, 12:34 PM

Allan Ramsay (1684–1758) – poet, playwright, founder of modern #Scots writing, & with a fair claim to be the father of #Romanticism – was born #OTD, 15 Oct. A 🎂 🧵 …
#C18

🖼️ Allan Ramsay, 1684–1758, by William Aikman – Scottish National Portrait Gallery
www.nationalgalleries.org/art-and-arti...

Portrait of Allan Ramsay (1684–1758), by William Aikman. Oil on canvas. Ramsay is clean-shaven, and looks out at the viewer with a half-smile. He wears a collarless dark green velvet coat, unbuttoned, and has an orange silk cloth wound about his head like an improvised turban.

@asls.org.uk Oct 15, 2026, 11:50 AM

New Voices in Irish & Scottish Studies Online Seminar: Walter Scott & Susan Ferrier
27 Oct, free online

Hilary Clydesdale on Walter Scott’s 1814 Lighthouse Yacht Journal
Kate Ferrier on the later literary career of Susan Ferrier
#litstudies #C18 #C19
www.abdn.ac.uk/riiss/news-e...

@nguthrie.bsky.social Oct 15, 2026, 10:28 AM

Snuffbox made from Japanese lacquer panels, mounted in gold by François-Thomas Germain (Paris, 1755). At Christie's, Geneva (est. CHF 80,000-120,000) #c18 #c18th #18thc

Catalogue: Oval set with panels of [black and gold] Japanese maki-e lacquer figuring Mandarin ducks in a pond on the cover and on the underside chrysanthemums over a pond jetty, within gold cagework chased with geometric motifs, gold lined, marked in cover, base and inner flange: charge, date-letter (O and P) and maker; on flange: décharge

Size/Dimensions: 8,4 cm. (3 ½ in.) long

Gross weight: 150.7 gr. (4 oz. 16 dwt.)

@johnobrien.bsky.social Oct 14, 2026, 12:29 PM

The latest Substack post on an eighteenth-century newspaper poem. This week, an anonymous parodic elegy on a lost chaw of tobacco, written in in imitation of Gray's "Elegy Wrote in a Country Churchyard." #c18th #c18 #18thcentury
literatureinc.substack.com/p/elegy-on-a...

@nguthrie.bsky.social Oct 14, 2026, 10:10 AM

Clavicules de Salomon, #c18 #c18th #18thc transcription of a cabalistic MS, collection of @antiquaries.bsky.social

Two circular diagrams with mystical symbols and annotations. The MS is a transcript of a cabalistic work (relating to secret, occult or mystical doctrines) with diagrams (pentacles) and tables. The name ‘David Quelle’ appears written on one of the pages, perhaps an owner of the manuscript at some point. The text is a falsely attributed grimoire (manual of magic, sorcery, and spellcasting) said to originally have been by King Solomon. Many similar grimoires attributed to him were written in the Renaissance. The original type of text and inspiration for later copies was probably a Latin or Italian text dating to the 14th or 15th century.

@nguthrie.bsky.social Oct 13, 2026, 10:25 AM

This looks fun! URL in alt text. #c18 #c18th #18thc

Call for papers for Gothic Traditions, Transmissions, Translations 1730-1850 (17-18 June 2027) with a moody view of the exterior of Strawberry Hill in grey against a black backdrop with gothic tracery enclosing a map of the world

https://www.strawberryhillhouse.org.uk/gothic-conference/

@nguthrie.bsky.social Oct 12, 2026, 11:36 AM

Snuffbox made in China for the European market (c.1750-60), with Earle D Vandekar of Knightsbridge #c18 #c18th #18thc

White enamel box with gilt metal mounts and famille rose figures in landscapes. Monogram in puce surrounded by scrollwork and small flowers on the lid. The box is derived from Meissen originals

@nguthrie.bsky.social Oct 11, 2026, 11:16 AM

Sugar basket by Hester Bateman (or workshop), 1783. With Nelson & Nelson, NYC #c18 #c18th #18thc

Ovoid bowl with c-scroll swing handle; short support and raised foot. Pierced ornament on bowl and foot. Beading. Detachable cobalt glass liner. Fully marked. Very good condition.
Dimensions: H (with handle) 7 1/4 x D 3 7/8 in. Weight (silver only): 5 troy ounces

@nguthrie.bsky.social Oct 10, 2026, 10:09 AM

'Hans Sloane' botanical plate (Chelsea, c1756), George R Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Art, Toronto. This would be the perfect serving dish for (Canadian) Thanksgiving dinner this weekend #c18 #c18th #18thc

Off-white oval plate with lightly scalloped edge. Painted in green and brown tones - a flowering branch, a large swalow-tailed butterfly, smaller insects. Design based on drawings made by Georg Dionysius Ehret in the Chelsea Physic Garden and published by Philip Miller between 1755 and 1760. Pieces like this are called 'Hans Sloane' dishes after Sir Hans, founder of the Garden.

@nguthrie.bsky.social Oct 9, 2026, 11:23 AM

Vase for a garniture (Vauxhall, c1764-68), MFA, Boston #c18 #c18th #18thc

Vase in Sèvres blue and gilt painted foliage with a white reserve painted with a scene of a girl in a woodland setting. Two rather ear-shaped white handles with gilding. On the blue and gilt lid is a finial of pink flowers and green leaves. H. 13 cm (5 1/8 in.). Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Jessie and Sigmund Katz Collection. Inv. no. 1988.793a-b.

@inneskeighren.bsky.social Oct 8, 2026, 11:12 AM

Might any Francophone colleagues be able to identify the source of the maxim (from "an Asiatic Minister to His Sovereign") being quoted here, in a letter of May 1796? "Sois ferme dans les resolutions,—vif & courageux dans l’Execution,—mais prudent & circonspect avant l’Entreprise." Merci! #C18

A photograph of an extract of a handwritten letter, dated 20 May 1796.

@nguthrie.bsky.social Oct 8, 2026, 10:48 AM

Hardstone nécessaire with gold mounts (English, c1760), recently sold at Christie’s (not to me!) for €2,048 (incl. premium; est. €2,000-3,000) #c18 #c18th #18thc

Tapering cylindrical formed of grey striated agate, the gold mounts chased with rococo scrolls and flowers, with diamond push-button, the hinged cover revealing a penknife with steel blade, an ear-spoon / toothpick, a pen's mount and a later gilt-metal spoon, apparently unmarked and with later French control mark for 18 K. Height 10.2 cm (4 1/8 in).

@johnobrien.bsky.social Oct 7, 2026, 7:38 PM

My Substack is issuing a new poem drawn from an eighteenth-century newspaper--where poems abounded--every week. Here's the latest, on a poem published in 1784 about the first balloon flight in London that year.
literatureinc.substack.com/p/the-great-...

#18c #c18 #c18th #poetry #18thcentury

@nguthrie.bsky.social Oct 7, 2026, 11:38 AM

There's a Chamberlain's Worcester vase (c1820) with @magdalenoxford.bsky.social on it, anyway. (Long) #c18 #c18th #18thc

Description from Bernard Rackham, Catalogue of the Herbert Allen Collection of English Porcelain (V&A, 1922), page 83, transcribed in the alt text for the second pic.

Plate 65 from the catalogue, with a B&W photograph of a vase with 'inverted bell-shaped body with two scrolled handles, each topped by a gilt head wearing a winged helmet. Square plinth, domed cover with knob in the form of a gilt conventional cauliflower. The view, of which the title 'Oxford' is written in red on the base of the vase, is painted in colours on one side of the body. The reverse is decorated with a formal pattern of festoons, rosettes, and stars in gold on a pale salmon-red ground. The cover and lower part of the body moulded with acanthus foliage.' The cover is marked 'Chamberlain's Worcester' and '155 New Bond Street London' in red. Heihgt 8 3/4 inches. The scene is adapted from plate i of The Copper Plate Magazine 1 (1792).

@nguthrie.bsky.social Oct 7, 2026, 9:57 AM

Inkstand with view of Merton College (Chamberlain’s Worcester, c1816), LACMA. (Long) #c18 #c18th #18thc. Could there be one with a view of @magdalenoxford.bsky.social ?!

Pink and white scrolly inkstand with gilding the central panel has a naturalistic view of Merton chapel in brown tones. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Gift of Mr. Walter T. Wells, photograph © Museum Associates/LACMA (56.30.13a-d)

@nguthrie.bsky.social Oct 6, 2026, 10:09 AM

Teapot (Wedgwood, c1770), at Bonhams, NYC (est. US$2,00-3,000) #c18 #c18th #18thc

Catalogue description:

Attributed to the Rhodes Workshop, the globular shape perfectly suited for a concentric 'target' pattern painted in chestnut-red and centred on each side with a five-pointed pinwheel floret in black and chestnut, the leaf molded spout and scroll handle mottled in a similar palette, 5 1/2 in. (14cm) high, both cover and base marked with numeral '4' in red